The former British prime minister Harold Wilson believed
that a good night’s sleep and a sense of history
were the essential qualities of 10 Downing Street’s
most successful residents. With the photographs of sinister
treatment inflicted on Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib
and the devastating report by the Red Cross further
damaging the credibility of his case for the liberation
of Iraq, the current Labour leader, Tony Blair, may
be forgiven for having had several sleepless nights
in recent weeks.
Advertisement
And, after several prominent members of his own party
this month began questioning how much longer he can
continue as prime minister, one wonders whether Blair
remembers recent British political history. For, as
he navigates the most treacherous period of his seven-year
premiership, he would do well to recall that in 1990
a cadre of conspiratorial Conservative ministers challenged
the leadership of then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher
and forced her resignation.
In truth, Blair is unlikely to face a leadership challenge
within his own party — indeed, no Labour leader
since the second world war has departed 10 Downing Street
without either losing an election or dying: Labour tends
to be loyal to its leaders. But the time may come when
Blair recognizes that, for the benefit of his party’s
political fortunes in next summer’s general election,
he should walk the plank before he is pushed.
Yet, for all of Blair’s present troubles, part
of the reason that speculation about his future as Britain’s
prime minister persists is that an agreement was allegedly
made between Blair and his chancellor, Gordon Brown,
that Blair would stand down towards the end of his second
term. This, coupled with Brown’s notoriously naked
ambition to succeed Blair, has fuelled a fervent game
of fantasy politics this month among disaffected Labour
politicians, Britain’s chattering classes, and
its ravenous press. Who, they ask, is the real Gordon
Brown? What kind of prime minister would he make? And
how different a leader to Tony Blair would he be?
Born in Glasgow in 1951, the son of a church minister
in the small Scottish town of Kirkaldy, Gordon Brown
was already canvassing for the Labour party at age 12
and working as a political activist by his early 20s.
In 1983, he entered parliament and shared an office
with another newly-elected MP, one Tony Blair. When
the Labour party swept into power in 1997 after eighteen
years of Tory rule, he was Blair’s automatic choice
for the role of the Chancellor of the Exchequer —
the British government’s chief financial minister,
responsible for raising government revenue through taxing
or borrowing and for controlling overall government
spending.
Yet, after seven years of Labour government, Brown’s
political instincts remain very much a mystery. His
speeches flirt not only with florid admiration for free
markets, enterprise and capitalism but also with stridently
socialist rhetoric, reminiscent of the Labour party
before Tony Blair and the infamous ‘Third Way.’
Thus, while marshalling the continued growth of Britain’s
economy, Brown has flown the flag for labor-market flexibility
and pro-enterprise policies on the one hand, and for
poverty reduction and wealth redistribution on the other.
If Brown’s political constitution remains a mystery,
it is hardly helped by his kaleidoscopic public image.
Dour, witty, passionate, nerdy, bullying, inspirational,
controlling, delegating, socialist, ultra-capitalist,
pro-American, and Scottish nationalist are just some
of the words used by the British press to describe the
chancellor. An “awkward, socially maladroit megalomaniac”
is how one Conservative politician likes to view him.
“Technocratic [and] rather remote” is the
criticism of another.
One gets the impression, too, that Brown isn’t
terribly troubled by his public image, or simply that
he finds it too hard to change. Yet most intriguing
of all is the conclusion of the economic historian Richard
Hott in his 2001 book on British chancellors: “Brown
is the new Margaret Thatcher — industrious, intelligent,
isolated, intimidating, tragically flawed, impressive.”
Such an auspicious comparison can hardly warm the hearts
of the dyed-in-the-wool socialists in the Labour party.
What, then, of Brown and America, George W. Bush and
Iraq? The chancellor certainly appears to respect the
United States, taking regular vacations there, frequently
citing American historians, and often inviting American
economists to meet him at the Treasury. Indeed, Brown
was heavily influenced by President Clinton’s
tax credits for the working poor in the 1990s. The Democrats,
in turn, have marveled at Brown’s savvy combination
of economic success and increased spending on public
resources, reflecting a camaraderie that would continue
should John Kerry be elected president this Fall. “He’s
very close to Kerry,” says Peter Wilby, the editor
of the New Statesman, about the chancellor. “Gordon
Brown is extraordinarily respected [in America],”
concurs Robert Reich, President Clinton’s former
labor secretary. “A Kerry administration would
certainly take a close interest in his initiatives.”
Were Bush to be re-elected, however, Brown would be
unlikely to confront him over Iraq, although he would
probably seek to put the Atlantic firmly between London
and Washington. After all, it is Blair’s apparent
refusal to distance himself from the president that
has exacerbated his party members’ dissatisfaction
with the difficulties arising in Iraq. Naturally, though,
Brown’s views on the occupation of Iraq remain
largely unknown. Saying very little about the war, he
did promise to “spend what it takes” to
disarm Saddam Hussein. Thus, in all likelihood, Brown
would refuse to pull British troops out of Iraq but
rather — like John Kerry — would seek to
transform the occupation into a much more international,
consensual endeavor.
There is, then, a faintly remarkable irony to all this.
As one Blair supporter put it last week: “So what
are we talking about? Tony walks the plank for being
too close to George Bush, to be replaced by Gordon,
who is infinitely more pro-American.” That may
be, but Blair, with his troubling foreign wars, has
become a liability to the careers of many Labour MPs
who rode into Westminster on his coat tails in the 1997
and 2001 general elections. Though the Labour party
currently trails the Tories by only a couple of points
in the polls — at a time when the traumas in Iraq
are at their most devastating — the rising tide
of discontent seems set to sweep Blair out of power
this Fall. Perhaps then the prime minister will be able
to catch up on his sleep and reflect upon his place
in history, as his former chancellor starts making his
own.
